Configure git to track only one file extension

Question

I have one directory tree with many kind of different files. There are 300 directories on the parent directory. Each directory could have other sub directories.

I only want to track *.cocci on all sub directories. Here is my .gitignore:

*
!*.cocci

But it do not work, as the files on sub directories are not tracked. How can I tell git that I only want to track *.cocci on all sub directories?

Have you actually `git add`ed the files? Just setting up `.gitignore` does not automatically cause files to be tracked... — twalberg, Oct 09 '12 at 14:57
I can only add a file if I use git add -f . This do not seem correct... — Peter, Oct 09 '12 at 16:08
possible duplicate of [Whitelisting and subdirectories in Git](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9162919/whitelisting-and-subdirectories-in-git) — daviesgeek, Oct 28 '13 at 07:23

score 49 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:34

49

Read this question.

You want:

# Blacklist everything
*
# Whitelist all directories
!*/
# Whitelist the file you're interested in. 
!*.cocci

Note, this'll track only *.cocci files. Yours doesn't work because you ignore everything (that's the first line), which ignores all subdirectories.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:34

Community

1
1

answered Oct 09 '12 at 16:11

simont

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I'm still not happy with git status output as it do not show untracked folder contents but the filter is working now. Thanks – Peter Oct 09 '12 at 16:39
1

Could you please change the comments in your answer? They must start their own lines. If you paste this into a .gitignore, it will not work (tested on v.1.9.1). Check out http://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Basics-Recording-Changes-to-the-Repository#Ignoring-Files – panepeter Nov 05 '14 at 21:44
3

You may also want to whitelist .gitignore – Ken A Dec 01 '14 at 13:52

score 7 · Answer 2 · answered May 10 '17 at 12:32

7

To extend @simont answer, if we wanted to whitelist *.cocci files of a given directory and its subdirectories I would wrongly have entered:

directory/*
!directory/*/
!directory/*.cocci

That seems not to be including *.cocci files under directory/subtree.

In order to find all *.cocci files in all sub-directories of directory entered the following:

directory/**
!directory/*/
!directory/**/*.cocci

answered May 10 '17 at 12:32

lubumbax

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Great! That's what I was finding! To make it clearer, if I want to ignore everything other than `./directory/*`, I should put `*; !directory/; !directory/*`. – Student Mar 28 '20 at 19:17

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 24 '17 at 00:00

2

It is impossible to unignore directory by !dir in .gitignore, but then it is still possible to add directory by hand:

git add dir -f

So if the .gitignore file looks like:

*
!*.txt

Then when you do git add . new *.txt files are then added. New directory will not be auto-added, it have to be added by hand by git add dir -f

answered Feb 24 '17 at 00:00

Milan Kerslager

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2
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This solved my issue with a directory that was being ignored, even though my `.gitignore` file had a `!dir/.exists` file setup. Note that the `dir` in the answer above should be replaced with the name of the directory that you want to be included in the git checkin. – kenjikato Jul 08 '20 at 08:18

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 09 '12 at 12:31

0

Have you tried !*/*.cocci instead of your !*.cocci?

answered Oct 09 '12 at 12:31

Martin Green

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Configure git to track only one file extension

4 Answers4

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